*SPOILER WARNING*
Are you interested in travel journalism, friends to lovers and unlikely friendships? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then Emily Henry’s 2021 novel “People We Meet on Vacation” is the next read, or watch, for you.
Despite the abundance of millennial dread and an unironic reference to flossing, Henry’s 2021 novel is the perfect feel-good read. Readers follow through the eyes of Poppy Wright, a bubbly, chaotic traveler, as she transitions from her teenage years to young adulthood. Each chapter is centered around a different vacation Poppy has taken with restrained and thoughtful Alex Nilsen, her token travel partner. The book jumps between present and past vacations the two have taken together over the course of 12 years.
The story is riddled with tension as readers are made aware of a friendship-ending conflict between Poppy and Alex that took place two years prior during their vacation in Croatia. The trip is referenced often through Poppy’s narration, but readers don’t learn what happened until the final chapters.
There were a couple changes made to the movie – which released on Netflix on Jan. 9 – that I appreciated. The book was entirely from Poppy’s perspective, which made it hard to understand Alex’s perspectives of their arguments. In the movie, viewers were able to see Alex (Tom Blyth) slowly fall in love with Poppy (Emily Bader), which makes the love story much better in my opinion.
I also appreciated that they changed what their fight was about. The book was built on miscommunication and hurt feelings. While the movie still had some of those aspects, Alex and Poppy’s fight was based more on her inability to settle down, rather than her dismissing or misunderstanding his feelings. This aspect made the fight more believable and less frustrating.
However, the movie felt like a loose adaptation of the book rather than an accurate adaptation of it. While the storyline is vaguely the same and there are a lot of noticeable similarities, a lot of the things that made Poppy and Alex the people they were in the book were left out. I acknowledge that it’s hard to adapt a 400-page book into an attention-grabbing movie, but how are we as viewers supposed to root for their relationship when we don’t know what is keeping them apart.
The movie is essentially a lot of montages of their vacations that are broken up with tear jerking, one-liners like, “How about we die alone together.” It may not seem like much now but watch the movie and you’ll see the importance.
There are a lot of small differences between the book and the movie – like the locations of events or years that they took place – but most of the time, the dialogue is the same. Because of this, I don’t have many complaints on whether she sprained her ankle on a hike in Colorado or in the streets of New Orleans.
The worst change from the book to the movie, in my opinion, was Poppy’s monologue at the end. While it was true to the story that was built in the film, the monologue completely disregarded the entire meaning of the name of the book. This left the movie’s name incomprehensible for anyone who had never read the book.
The book has heart. It is passionate, sincere and emotional. The readers can clearly interpret the turmoil Poppy and Alex are experiencing when they are fighting and the joy they feel when they finally get together. The movie, on the other hand, completely stripped both characters of their intricate backstories and their character development.
